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Despite all of these tensions and contradictions, the new usage of the word ‘privilege’ has entirely erased the older socio-economic meaning. Proof of the transformation lies in the fact that many social theorists today include in their laundry lists of the varieties of privilege, ‘class privilege.’ This phrase would have struck Clement Attlee or Emma Goldman as obvious nonsense, because privilege and inequality define class. The phrase is patently tautological and redundant, like ‘political government’ or ‘illegal crimes.’ Moreover, it implies a further contradiction: to speak of ‘class privilege’ is to imply that the existence of unequal social classes is acceptable, so long as they are treated equally.

young activists can feed a constant conflict over racist Native-American sports mascots, even as actual Native Americans, when surveyed, consistently say that they do not care about the mascots, and instead are far more concerned about poverty, addiction, and violence in their communities.

Accusations of "cultural appropriation" serving to distract from more difficult challenges.

When I lecture in Intro to Socy, I spend a great deal of time on this statement to help them grasp the fundamentals of the sociological imagination. While network theory may seem like common sense, it directly challenges the ideology of individualism and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. If you accept that others influence you, then you have to begin to accept the realities of privilege and discrimination. This can often be too much cognitively, particularly for privileged students who prefer to think of their benefits as wholly earned. SNA reveals how inequality is produced and reproduced.

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DUBNER: Interesting. So let me ask you this. Do you keep up with stuff because you feel it’s the quote “right thing to do” or because you really like it?

Lol. Isn't is cute (and by cute I mean unbelievably typical) that the adult male asks if these kids listen to the news because they "really like it" as if all people are afforded the choice to "like it" or not when it keeps us informed on our oppressors and the injustices and the disasters harming us. Ignorance is a luxury only the privileged can afford.

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The right to the city, as it is now constituted, is too narrowly confined, restricted in most cases to a small political and economic elite who are in a position to shape cities more and more after their own desires.

"She sees herself as an activist and instead of standing on the picket line, she's creating beautiful, conceptual pieces that get her message across," Andre Guichard said. "If you don't think, in 2015, that people of other skin colors can have an opinion, that's a sign we need to have further conversation about it."

The point is that maybe you, as the gallery owners, should have showcased a black artists' work on this theme.

he launches into an extended claim that “privileged groups” will always oppose action that threatens the status quo. They will always consider attacks on their privilege as “untimely,” especially because groups have a tendency towards allowing immorality that individuals might oppose (173).

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The privilege-pushers have a view of structure (thus of patriarchy) that is so vague that some of them dismiss the notion of a structural view of oppression as at best, academic bullshit, and at worst, a way for an individual to dodge examination of her own privilege.

I struggle a bit with this because I don't know to view structural oppression as anything but, to borrow a phrase from earlier in the article, "just the way things are" without insisting that it emerges from the way people behave. What is the structure if not an organization of individuals? What is the hope for revolution if not a tipping point? To suggest that the actors are classes rather than individuals pushes the question back without answering it: "What are classes if not collections of individuals?"